From Haven to Home:
America As A Haven For Jews

From the time
of its discovery, America has been a haven
for Europe's oppressed and persecuted. In
1492, the same year that Christopher
Columbus set sail for the New World, the Spanish
Inquisition reached its apogee. Spainexpelled its Jews,
and, five years later, Portugal followed
suit. The remnants of Iberian Jewry found
refuge in the cities and towns of Europe,
North Africa, and the Near East, and, in
the first half of the seventeenth century,
some of their descendants established communities
in Dutch-ruled Brazil.

In 1654, Portugal recaptured Brazil and expelled its Jewish
settlers. Most returned to Holland or moved
to Protestant-ruled colonies in the Caribbean.
A group of twenty-three Jewish refugees,
including women and children, arrived in
New Amsterdam hoping to settle and build
a new home for themselves. In the years that
followed, the growing Jewish community pressed
the authorities to extend to them rights
offered to other settlers, including the
right to trade and travel, to stand guard,
to own property, to establish a cemetery,
to erect a house of worship, and to participate
fully in the political process.

For Jews, the
promise of America was deeply rooted in its
commitment to religious liberty. George Washington's
declaration in 1790 to the Newport Hebrew
Congregation that this nation gives "to
bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance," provided
the Jewish community with an early assurance
of America's suitability as a haven.

Three hundred
and fifty years ago an ancient people first
took haven in a new land. From those beginnings
until today, Jewish life in America has presented
both opportunities and challenges. In the
early years, Jews fought to be treated like
everyone else, seeking the "equal footing" that
was theirs by law but not necessarily in
practice. More recently, like other minorities
and ethnic groups, they have asserted their
right to be different and to have those differences
accommodated and accepted by society-at-large.

Perhaps the
greatest challenge faced by the Jewish community
has been to find ways of maintaining its
group identity in an open and free society.
To this end, American Jewry has created uniquely
American Jewish religious movements, institutions,
and associations suited to an ever-changing
American scene. When millions of East European
Jews arrived between 1881 and 1924, American
Jews set up networks of organizations to
settle and “Americanize” the new arrivals.
And when confronted with prejudice and discrimination,
Jews responded by creating organizations
that fought for tolerance and acceptance.

Fifty years
ago, the American Jewish community celebrated
its tercentenary. At the culminating event
of that celebration, President Dwight
D. Eisenhower delivered a stirring address in
which he called the arrival of the Jews to
New Amsterdam in 1654 “an event meaningful
not only to the Jews of America, but to all
Americans — of all faiths,
of all national origins.” Then Irving
Berlin, himself a Russian Jewish immigrant,
sang his patriotic hymn, “God Bless
America.” In so doing, he put into words
the deep gratitude that he felt towards the
United States, which had been to him, and
to countless new Americans like him, first
a haven and then a home.